Welcome to the March 2013 issue of ScieCom info. Nordic - Baltic Forum for Scientific Communication.
Abstract
NEWS
We are pleased to present the exciting developments from the DOAJ team. DOAJ has a special place in our hearts here in Lund as it was conceived at the first Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication in Lund/Copenhagen 2002, and then produced by the Lund University Libraries Head Office for ten years under Lars Bjørnshauge’s leadership, until he moved on to Director of SPARC Europe and Managing Director of DOAJ in its new constellation.
From the DOAJ news release:
“We have just completed the transition to a new environment and launched a new platform with integrated functionality for sharing, exporting and enhanced search/browse functionality: at the article level, search results can be filtered by language and publication year and by license and publication fee; at the journal level, you can filter by subject, by country, by license and by publication fees."
- For the first time more than 50% of the journals are providing metadata at article level. DOAJ will continue to work with the 2000+ publishers to increase this figure.
- More than 1 million articles are now searchable in DOAJ which means more than 1 million article-level metadata entries are available for harvesting!!
COMING EVENTS
“Making Data Count: Research Data Availability and Research Assessment.” A Knowledge Exchange Workshop 11-12 April 2013 in Berlin Germany.
Book the date for Mötesplats Open Access (Meeting Place Open Access) 17-18 April 2013 at the School of Business, Gothenburg University.
The 17th International Conference on Electronic Publishing - “Mining the Digital Information Networks” will be held June 13-14, 2013 at Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden.
ARTICLES
Jan Erik Frantsvåg analyses the consequences of the increasing tendency of large research funders to use their financial power to put pressure behind their demands for Open Access. Non-compliance with the contracts between funders and grantees will expose institutions and researchers to the risks of both economic and career losses.In “Researcher, beware“ those risks are discussed. It is very important for institutions and researchers to be aware of possible consequences of funding contracts. Institutions with externally funded research are accused of gross negligence if they do not teach their researchers how to handle these contracts and what compliance implies. To avoid the risks and frustration involved in being exposed to a jungle of different policies, Frantsvåg suggests, that everyone should align their policies with those of the EU or NIH. Frantsvåg also comments on the use of the CC-By licence, for instance required by the Wellcome Trust and the RCIK.
http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/6122/5251
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In Iceland two important changes regarding open access took place in January 2013 . Sólveig Thorsteinsdottir describes them in “Icelandic funder mandate and revised law for publicly supported research in Iceland“. In December 2012 the Icelandic parliament approved a bill amending the law on public support for scientific research. A new article about open access was added, stating that: “The results of research funded by grants from the funds that come under this Act shall be published in open access and made accessible to everyone, unless otherwise agreed. Beneficiaries shall in all their research papers resulting from the funds, state the name of the grantor.“ This important change was accompanied by another significan event: an open access mandate from the largest public funding agency, Rannís - the Icelandic Centre for Research
http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/6123/5250
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Leif Longva: “Tendering the purchase of Open Access publishing” finds that open access publishing is about to enter a new phase. The benefits of OA are now widely acknowledged and receive high-level support. Longva chooses the Research Councils UK (RCUK), and the coming EU framework program Horizon 2020 as prominent examples when he takes a market-oriented view of the fact that many institutions now establish funds to help authors pay their article processing fees (APCs). He quotes the RCIK policy: “RCUK does not specify an upper or lower limit on the level of APCs paid out of the Block Grant./---/At the same time, institutions should work with their authors to ensure that a proper market in APCs develops, with price becoming one of the factors that is taken into consideration when deciding where to publish.” The disadvantage of this system it that it lacks real incentives for authors to shop around for journals with the most reasonable APCs. Consequently, journals are free to set any prices they want. To deal with this situation and create a real market, tendering should be used to purchase open access to ensure that buyers/authors get the most value for money. http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/6124/5252
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Three authors from Lithuania, Gintare Tautkeviciene, Vilma Petrikaite, and Marija Eidukeviciute present the project “Open Access from the Perspectives of Young Researchers”.This project was implemented in 2012 by Kaunas University of Technology together with the Lithuanian Society of Young Researchers and the partners Lithuanian Research Libraries Consortium and the Association of Lithuanian Serials . While implementing this project three seminars on open access were organized. During these seminars the doctoral students, young scientists and other researchers were introduced to international and regional open access initiatives, the possibilities to become more globally visible, the European Commission, the European Research Council and other funding bodies' requirements for research publications and scientific data access, copyright issues, and the concept of open science. A series of workshops was arranged, concluding with a public discussion open access developments in Lithuania.
http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/6130/5257
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In the Swedish report “It takes two to tango – making way for relevant research support services at Lund University Libraries (LUB)” Hanna Voog & Gunilla Wiklund present a 2012 project to investigate what types of support researchers in Lund need and in what areas. Were existing library services adequate, should they be strengthened or should entirely new services be developed? The project included a literature review on definitions, examples of research support services and researcher needs, as well as experiences of such support services. A survey was carried out to identify existing support services at LUB , and there were focus group interviews with researcher groups from each participating faculty. One result of the project led to the important conclusion, that research support services need to be easily accessible, visible, and close to the researchers.
http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/6125/5253
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Finally wee turn to the specific subject of open access monographies, discussed by Jörgen Eriksson and Aina Svensson in ”Monographs and Open Access”.The developments of OA publishing during the last decades has mainly focused on scientific and scholarly journal articles. However, an increasing number of initiatives concentrating on the academic monography have been introduced. There is now a tendency to regard business models for printed monograhies within Arts & Humanities and the Social Sciences as unsustainable. Publishers, universities and other stakeholders are looking for new ways to handle monographies.
Eriksson & Svensson present a Swedish project mainly focusing on two areas: to make monographies freely available, and to propose a national model for academic review of monographies. To keep up with the latest developments, the authors participated in the “4th Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing (COASP) 19-21 September 2012”. and give a summary of the session on monographies and open access.
http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/6126/5254
We hope that you will have a god read.
Your comments and ideas are always most welcome
Ingegerd Rabow Editor-in-chief ScieCom info
